This blog follows and explains the processes behind interesting geological events. The emphasis is on those events that are energetic, explosive, and have led to, or have the potential to lead to, disasters.

Welcome!

This blog provides commentary on interesting geological events occurring around the world in the context of my own work. This work is, broadly, geological fluid dynamics. The events that I highlight here are those that resonate with my professional life and ideas, and my goal is to interpret them in the context of ideas I've developed in my research. The blog does not represent any particular research agenda. It is written on a personal basis and does not seek to represent the University of Illinois, where I am a professor of geology and physics. Enjoy Geology in Motion! I would be glad to be alerted to geologic events of interest to post here! I hope that this blog can provide current event materials that will make geology come alive.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Have you ever opened a can of mixed nuts and noticed that the biggest ones are on top? When a can of mixed nuts is shaken, the big ones do migrate to the top. This phenomenon is known as the "Brazil nut effect", because the biggest nuts in a mixed can are called Brazil nuts. Here's a link to a video about this in a laboratory setting. In "nature", the physics is much more complicated: what if the 'nuts' have different densities (imagine that one is a real organic nut, but another is a lead weight), and the rate and magnitude of shaking changes. Sometimes Brazil nuts could even end up going to the bottom, instead of the top. However, keep the Brazil nut effect in mind as you watch this incredible video of a mudflow developing in Pakistan ( the most interesting stuff is at 1.5 minutes). Again, as always, thanks to Dave's Landslide Blog for continuous coverage of environmental hazards around the world.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

(Steve Marshak, a professor of geology at UIUC wrote a substantial part of this.)

The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull volcano has captured the attention of the world during the past week, for it has disrupted air travel to or from Europe, and therefore has traumatized transportation links, business, and tourism worldwide. A worried public wonders why there, why now . . . and how much longer? A bit of background about the geology of Iceland, and of the style of eruption we are now observing may be of help.

Eyjafjallajokull is a vent along one of the major fissures or gashes that transect Iceland, for this island sits astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the very active boundary between the North American plate (including North America and Greenland) to the west, and the Eurasian plate to the east. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is, in geologic jargon, a divergent plate boundary, meaning it is a surface at which two plates move apart. This movement is accommodated by sea-floor spreading, a process by which new oceanic crust forms by the rise of magma from the mantle below.

Geologists proposed back in the 1960s, that sea-floor spreading takes place along mid-ocean ridge systems and that, through this process, ocean basins grow wider over time and the continents on either side move apart. A huge volume of geologic data from the sea-floor supports this theory. For example, the theory predicts that they youngest crust of the Atlantic Ocean occurs at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and that the oldest sea floor occurs adjacent to the continents. And that's exactly what researchers have found.

In the last few years, careful measurements using GPS (the same satellite-based global positioning system used in an automobile's navigation system) have allowed geologists to see the continents moving in real time—the process of sea floor spreading takes place without a shadow of doubt. On average, the distance between London and New York increases by about 2 cm (1 inch) per year, about the rate that your fingernails grow, and nothing that humans can do can change that fact. The sea-floor spreading process may seem really slow, and it is. But given the vast expanse of geologic time, slow movements can yield great distances. At 2 cm/year, the Atlantic has widened by about 2 km in the last 100,000 years (the time since the appearance of modern humans), and about 2,000 km in the last 100 million years. At this rate, the North Atlantic started to open about 180 million years ago—before that time, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge didn't exist and a dinosaur could have walked from New York to London without getting its feet wet.

Most of the volcanism along the worlds 40,000 of mid-ocean ridge occurs at depth 2 km beneath the sea, in utter darkness away from the inquiring eyes of humans. But research submarines have been able to photograph the consequences of this activity, including fresh lava flows and black smokers, remarkable jets of super-hot water heated by magma (molten rock) below the surface. Iceland is special — it sits atop a huge plateau of lava, a volume much greater than any other location along a mid-ocean ridge. For this reason, many geologists have suggested that Iceland is a hot spot, a region where a column of particularly hot rock is rising slowly from great depths in the Earth. When this rock reaches the base of the plate, it starts to melt, producing vast quantities of magma, much more than normally occurs along mid-ocean ridges. As this magma erupts, it built up the Icelandic plateau and eventually emerged from the sea as an island. But it is not a stable island—as sea-floor spreading progresses inexorably, the island splits along fissures, erupting currents of lava (molten rock at the Earth's surface). These eruptions drain the supply of magma that accumulated below the island for a while, and when enough of the magma has drained, the eruption ceases. But just for a while—inevitably, as more magma rises, and as the island slowly splits, an eruption is sure to happen again.

The last really major eruption along the fissure system of Iceland happened in 1783, when Benjamin Franklin was ambassador to France. The ash affected the climate in Europe that year, causing an overall cooling. It was Franklin, in fact, who published the first article to suggest a relation between climate and volcanic eruptions. (The effect he described, significantly, is not the same effect as caused by long-term changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases, such as CO2—volcanic eruptions of the magnitude we're seeing in Iceland, or that the world has witnessed in recent centuries, such as at Krakatoa and Pinatubo, have a fairly short-term impact. Other ashy eruptions, such as the one of Tambora in 1816, also had global climate impacts—1816 was so wet and cold in Europe that it came to be known as the "year without a summer." It's been suggested that somber climate of the last one inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein)

The fissure came alive again, on March 20, when the volcanic vent called Eyjafjallajokull awakened from repose with an eruption on the northeast flank, in a narrow 2-km ice free zone between it and neighboring Katla volcano[1]. Low fire fountains reminiscent of Hawaiian volcanism burst from a 500 meter long fissure, and a small plume of ash less than 1 km high developed. This eruption continued intermittently until April 12.

After a very brief repose, magma worked its way into the central glacier-covered crater and a new eruption started just after midnight on the 14th of April. A series of vents opened up along a fissure nearly 2 km long. The intruded magma provide heat to melt the glacial ice, producing floods of water, known as Jokulhlaups, that flowed under the ice toward the southern coast of Iceland. These reached the coast around noon on April 14, destroying roads, infrastructure and farmlands. Icelandic geologists have done a wonderful job of monitoring and forecasting the eruptions, and 800 people were safely evacuated before the devastation hit.

When daylight broke, an eruption plume was observed, reaching more than 8 km height, carrying ash high into the atmosphere where the jet stream was parked over Iceland. During the first three days, some 70-80 million cubic meters of magma were discharged, at an average rate of about 750 tonnes/second.

The change in eruptive style between the March and April phases of this eruption can be attributed to the availability of water to the magma. The March eruptions were “dry”, driven only by the fairly minor amounts of gases dissolved in the magma, and by the pressure that squeezes magma beneath upward like bubbly toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube. In the most recent phase, water from the melting glaciers sank downwards through the ground and came into contact with the magma and surrounding hot rocks. Where the water only contacts hot rocks, it vaporizes and rises to form billows of white steam. But where it contacts the magma, it abruptly cools (is "quenched") and the magma, causing it to solidify almost instantly, into glass. The result produces vast quantities of fine volcanic ash that are then blown out of the volcano in dark roiling ash clouds. In places where the water has contacted the magma, the production of ash exposes more magma to more water and so the process feeds on itself creating more material to that erupts into the plume.

What does the ash consist of? Viewed under a microscope, it looks like tiny, jagged flakes and slivers of glass. Chemically, the ash consists of the same elements that make up the magma—mostly silica (SiO2), magnesium oxide, and iron oxide. Silica is the same chemical compound that comprises the familiar mineral quartz, which when melted and quenched produces window glass. Ashy, steamy eruptions such as the one now occurring in Iceland are called phreatomagmetic eruptions, meaning that the eruption is driven not only by magma with its dissolved gases, but surface waters (the “phreato” part of the word). In this case, the surface waters are being produced by melting of the ice cap on top of Eyjafjallajokull. The combination produces very explosive eruptions and is one reason that Iceland carries the nickname “Land of Fire and Ice”.

Winds carried the ash toward Europe where it arrived on April 15, causing the closure of air traffic throughout Scandanavia and northern Europe. Unusual stagnant high-pressure conditions in Europe have prevented the ash cloud from dispersing, causing continued air transport and economic problems in Europe. The ash plume activity Ha continued to the present, with an average height of 5 km and pulses to 8 km.

When the magma fragments into fine ash particles, static electricity builds up on the particles and is then discharged in magnificent displays of lightning. Recent research suggests that volcanic plumes rotate around their axis, like super-cell thunderstorms. Due to the rotation, electrically charged ash particles are spun out away from the axis to form a sheath on the exterior of the plume, causing dramatic lightning displays to be concentrated in the sheath.

How long will the eruption occur? No one can predict exactly, but careful monitoring will minimize the unexpected. What will the weather be like when the next eruption occurs? No one can predict at all! This eruption was a very small one by global standards, but it occurred just when the atmospheric conditions were right to make conditions in Europe miserable. It is a volcano-weather pattern that is statistically very small. Seismic activity called “volcanic tremor” now occurring in Iceland suggests that the area is remaining active, at least underground Only time will tell if 2010 will be another year without a summer.

Monday, August 9, 2010

On August 6, a melting glacier in British Columbia, Canada, was reported to have triggered a massive muddy landslide at 5:30 a.m. Later reports, still somewhat confusing, say that it was actually the Capricorn glacier itself that gave way. The area affected is about 150 miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia. This is an area of unstable volcanic rocks prone to landslides. The estimated volume of the slide is estimated to be 40 million cubic meters, and is the second largest slide in Canadian history, the largest being the Hope slide of 1965 that had a volume of 46-million cubic meters. The new slide is being referred to as the Mount Meager slide. The slide stopped in the area where Megher Creek intersects the Lillooet River, and temporarily damed the Lillooet. A temporary lake was formed containing 1.5 - 3 million cubic meters of water, but breached through the dam early in the morning of August 7 (3:00 a.m.) It cut a breach between 25-50 meters wide (contrast this to the on-going drama at Attabad in Pakistan). Further information is here, as well as more photos. The photo attached was taken by "Bonny Makarewicz, Special to the [Vancouver] Sun", and can be found in the reference cited.

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==>My book:The Dynamics of Disaster <==

Published by W.W. Norton--Click on image to go to Amazon.com

Synopsis of Book and Reviews

If you want to learn a bit of the science behind earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, rogue waves, cyclones and hurricanes, and tornadoes, this is an introduction that weaves together stories of various disasters--some barely known to much of the world--their causes and dynamics, and some suggested actions we can take to protect ourselves. The book is available both in paper and as an audio CD.

"This is a fantastic book. I've recommended to colleagues at FEMA and am using it as a text for my disaster classes. It really demonstrates how knowledge of the environment should inform policy. It was a page turner for me!"--Dr. Trish on Customer Reviews at Amazon.com

''Geologist Kieffer argues that we don't understand disasters as well as we should. She contrasts 'stealth disasters' caused by long-term human impact, including climate change and soil erosion, with natural disasters or 'acts of God,' which are also increasingly affected by human actions . . . [A] highly accessible look at disasters.'' --Booklist

"Kieffer's brisk and lucid presentation has some of the relish with which surgeons reputedly regale each other with tales from the operating theatre. Laid out before the reader are the suppurating wounds, scalds, tremors, and scars acquired by the Earth over millennia, centuries, decades, or minutes."--Claudio Vita-Finzi in The Times of London

"If you are an amateur weather geek, disaster wonk or budding student of the earth sciences, you will want to read this book. (If you're squeamish, skip the chapter titled "A Plague of Snakes.")--Seattle Times by Mary Ann Gwinn

"[T]he clarity of Kieffer’s writing, coupled with her careful choice of supporting graphics, makes the content engaging and accessible to a wide readership." Alison Stokes in TheTimesHigherEducation

“In The Dynamics of Disaster, famed geoscientist Susan Kieffer merges stories and science in a fascinating introduction to the dangerous side of the Earth, with key insights for citizens and enough excitement to captivate the full range of students.”—Richard B. Alley, author of Earth: The Operator’s Manual

"Both general readers and working scientists will enjoy this well-written book--and learn some things they did not know...Summing up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals; general audiences."--by Seth Stein in Choice Reviews Online (of the American Library Association), April 2014

"This [impressive] book ought to be placed in the hands of politicians, engineers, insurance assessors and, frankly, anyone who sees sense in understanding the processes and systems that guide our planet." --Geographical, December 2013, by Jonathan Wright

This book is part of a recent trend--one that is just beginning, but is likely to grow--in which scientists, especially young ones, seek to move beyond the "disasters are bad" view presented in beginner classes to a more sophisticated and nuanced view…Seth Stein in Physics World (U.K.)

"It is like a "Magic School Bus" outing for adults, with Kieffer acting as Ms. Frizzle, guiding the reader around the world to disaster hotspots, where she analyzes and breaks down the physical characteristics that contribute to events in those areas."--Summit Daily, December 20, 2013

#1 in list of Best Sellers: Geology, from May 2013 to March 2014. LibraryJournal.com

Victoria Raschke's Reviews (Jan. 09, 2019) Kieffer's explanations of the how natural disasters occur is perfectly suited to the interested layperson. The section on rogue waves was worth the price of admission in that it explains something that always seemed kind of supernatural. If you have any interest at all in understanding our living planet and why it sometimes feels like it would be happy to be rid of us, this is the book for you.